Interview – CatholicVote.orghttps://www.catholicvote.org
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mercer@catholicvote.orgRaymond Arroyo on How Mother Angelica’s Last Battle Was Her Greatesthttps://www.catholicvote.org/raymond-arroyo-on-how-mother-angelicas-last-battle-was-her-greatest/
https://www.catholicvote.org/raymond-arroyo-on-how-mother-angelicas-last-battle-was-her-greatest/#commentsMon, 30 May 2016 03:10:57 +0000http://catholicvote.org/?p=8759If we listen to American pop culture, we’d think that women over 40 should never leave the house unless they’re going for Botox injections. Over 50, and they’d better just stay inside and play pinochle. And by retirement age, women are only good for baking cookies and fixing grandchildren’s boo-boos.

But EWTN foundress Mother Angelica didn’t even start broadcasting from a converted garage in Birmingham, Alabama, until 1981, when she was 58 years old. Over the next 20 years, this unheralded female media pioneer created a worldwide satellite, cable-TV, radio and Internet network, and may have become the greatest American evangelist since Archbishop Fulton Sheen.

After a stroke in 2001, she spent the next 15 years living in the cloistered Our Lady of the Angels monastery in Hanceville, Alabama, until her death on March 27, Easter Sunday, 2016, a little less than a month short of her 93rd birthday.

On May 17, “Mother Angelica: Her Grand Silence” was published, written by EWTN news director Raymond Arroyo, chronicling her final years, when illness robbed her of her ability to walk and even to talk. But, he argues, it may have been the most consequential time of her life.

“At the core,” he said in a telephone interview, “I’ll tell you why this book is important. It’s hope to people at the end of their journey, and hope to people who are contending with the end of life. It often doesn’t make sense to them.. They see their loved ones suffering. In Mother’s case, you get to see in real time people who were touched by her suffering and oblation and prayer in those last 15 years, because I received hundreds of letters from these people, from all over the world, who were just discovering her in 2004 and 2016, when she dies. They didn’t know her before then.

“What you realize is — and it’s the economy of God — she reached more people in the last 15 years of her life, when she was off the air, confined to a corner room, unable to walk on her own, than at any point during her 20-year broadcasting career.

“Because of the growth of her network — which grew by leaps and bounds — and the ubiquity of the biography and all the books I edited for the monastery, her thoughts and words reached people far beyond anything that happened during her public career.

“That is extraordinary, and only God could engineer something like that.”

One reason that Mother Angelica had the impact that she did, was that she seemed to have an utter fearlessness when dealing with the Church hierarchy and the outside world. She was a loyal daughter of the Church, but also fiercely loyal to her spiritual spouse, Christ, and to the Church’s orthodox teachings. Mother Angelica was never afraid to call out those who professed the Faith but acted otherwise. But, no one would have listened to her had she exhibited the same hypocrisy.

At the same time, she gave personal witness to the sacrificial aspect of suffering.

“Mother Angelica was the whole package,” said Arroyo. “She lived the Faith that she proclaimed; she didn’t just proclaim it. I loved that about her. Right up until the end, Mother’s whole life, her whole public career, she taught people the value of pain and suffering.

“The woman had a spinal problem. She had a lame leg; she had asthma; she had a bloated heart; she had diabetes. The woman had every problem known to man throughout her life, and she constantly talked about the value of pain and suffering. If it’s offered up to God, can bring incredible good and do incredible good and benefit others you’ve never known — if you’re willing to offer it up, and you do it intentionally.

“Here you have her at the end of her years, the last 15 years of her life, she fully embraces that idea. She shows you what it looks like. It’s ‘Her Grand Silence.’ It could have been called ‘Her Last Pronouncement,’ because, in many ways, her life boldly proclaims that notion that you can offer up your own suffering for others, and that it does incredible good.

“Not only does it save your own soul, but it saves countless others around you. There’s meaning in all that suffering. There’s meaning in all of that pain. Ultimately, that’s consoling to people going through similar situations.”

Of course, not everyone is going to live out their destiny in the public eye, or have books written about them after they die. But, perhaps some people do so that we all can learn that we are not alone in our experiences.

Said Arroyo, “Mother took me into her confidence. I love the first biography, because it gives you an amazing fly-over of this woman, abandoned by her father, barely making it out of high school, rejected by so many people in her life. This disabled nun — yet, this is the instrument that God uses to build the largest religious cable network on the planet. It defies description.

“That journey is an important one, but this journey [in the new book]is the one that everybody can relate to. We’re not all going to see angels. We’re not all going build cable networks. We will all get sick; and we will all die. This story bespeaks the hope on the far side of that suffering as only Mother could present it and teach it.”

]]>https://www.catholicvote.org/raymond-arroyo-on-how-mother-angelicas-last-battle-was-her-greatest/feed/1Leah Remini, Welcome Home!https://www.catholicvote.org/leah-remini-welcome-home/
https://www.catholicvote.org/leah-remini-welcome-home/#commentsSun, 06 Sep 2015 05:11:51 +0000http://www.catholicvote.org/?p=68698A few months ago, I was at a taping of the NBC game show “I Can Do That!”, which included dancer/choreographer Cheryl Burke (“Dancing With the Stars”) as a contestant. I was sitting in the green room with Burke’s then-beau, restaurateur J.T. Torregiani, and one of Burke’s friends, former “King of Queens” star Leah Remini.

With an NBC publicist joining in, there was general Catholic inside-baseball chat going on — “Where do you go to Mass? Who has the best music?” — and Remini was joining in from time to time. I knew that Remini, also a baptized Catholic, had left the “Church” of Scientology in 2013, and I’d heard she was returning to the Faith. It sure seemed to be the case that evening.

Remini says that she decided to leave the church following the birth of her daughter, Sofia, in 2004.

“I decided I didn’t want to raise my daughter in the church because from what I’ve experienced and what I saw, the church becomes your everything. It becomes your mother, your father, your everything. You are dependent on the church,” she explains.

“I just didn’t want her to be raised that way, because let’s say in 10 years if I don’t want to be connected to the church anymore, my own daughter would be taught to disconnect from me.”

On Friday, Remini, 45, and her family took another step back into the bosom of the Church, as she and husband Angelo Pagan shared photos of the Catholic baptism of their daughter Sofia.

]]>https://www.catholicvote.org/leah-remini-welcome-home/feed/14‘A.D.: The Bible Continues’: The Cross in the Sky, Mary and the Holy Spirithttps://www.catholicvote.org/a-d-the-bible-continues-the-cross-in-the-sky-mary-and-the-holy-spirit/
https://www.catholicvote.org/a-d-the-bible-continues-the-cross-in-the-sky-mary-and-the-holy-spirit/#commentsSun, 05 Apr 2015 18:33:07 +0000http://www.catholicvote.org/?p=66009Tonight, Easter Sunday, April 5, the 12-part series “A.D.: The Bible Continues” premieres on NBC, with executive producers and spouses Mark Burnett and Roma Downey continuing the saga they began with “The Bible” on History Channel in 2013 (and its two-hour movie version, “Son of God,” in 2014).

A few days ago, I posted an interview I did at a press event in January with Burnett and Downey — click here for that — but that wasn’t all of our conversation, and they weren’t the only people I talked to.

“There’s no basis for playing [Jesus],” said Di Pace, speaking to me in a corner of a party at a press event in January in Pasadena, California. “No one actually says how He felt. There is no description of what He was thinking at that particular moment, and the thought process and how He felt when they had to crucify Him, and He had to just take it.

“He believed in what He was doing, but of course, he was a man. He doubted it. I love the idea that there is a very small moment when He looks up at the sky, and He says, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’”

According to Burnett and Downey, when they struck the deal with NBC — which already airs Burnett’s “The Celebrity Apprentice” and “The Voice” — they weren’t sure when “A.D.” would air.

Said Downey, “We’re very encouraged to be on network television with this,with the potential of reaching millions of people with this story. We weren’t kidding today when we said this is the most anticipated piece of work in our careers, with the amount of people emailing and reaching out to us about how excited they are that this series is going to be available — remembering that many people still don’t have cable, with a subscription.

“So there’s the opportunity, Easter Sunday, for families to be able to gather together and turn the television on and get, ‘A.D.'”

Added Burnett, “We had no idea when this would come on. It’s amazing, because you never know when it could be available.”

There was also a sign in the heavens in the form of a cross-shaped cloud in the sky over the set in Morocco.

“The cross in the sky was a show-stopper down there,” said Downey, “as everybody fumbled underneath long robes for hidden iPhones to take photographs of that.

“At another point, there was a double rainbow, which kissed the heavens. A rainbow always feels like a blessing. The rainbow shows up in Scripture, so a double rainbow felt like a double blessing. There are signs everywhere if you choose to read them and feel the encouragement in them.”

“The key will be,” said Burnett, “to have the audience fall in love with Peter and Paul. You don’t have Jesus, as he is in the Gospels there, throughout.”

“But,” said Downey, ” we have the Holy Spirit, who is the star of the show — the Holy Spirit and Pentecost, which will occur in the third episode. Mary, the mother of Jesus is in there. With the wonders of CGI, we’re able to create this amazing supernatural occurrence with the wind and the fire descending into the Upper Room and sweeping around.

“You see the movement of their hair and their costumes, and it swirls so fast, it starts to look like tongues of fire on their heads. It’s very cool.”

Italian-Australian actress Greta Scacchi plays the Virgin Mary (seen at top with Babou Ceesay, who plays John, and Chipo Chung, as Mary Magdalene), who unfortunately will not be seen in all 12 episodes.

“Mother Mary will depart the series,” says Downey, “and she does go off. She’s been handed over to the care of John. She’s around those first few episodes. We have a really beautiful scene where the guys are all so anxious and fearful that Jesus has been killed — it’s in that few days before He’s risen.

“They’re almost arguing among themselves, filled with fear, and a little bit of doubt creeping in. ‘He said He would come back, what if He doesn’t?’ She overhears them and comes in and says to them, ‘Could you not wait three days?’

“She really addresses them in a way that gets their attention and reminds them to be of good faith. It’s a really beautiful scene, and Greta is incredible in it.”

]]>https://www.catholicvote.org/a-d-the-bible-continues-the-cross-in-the-sky-mary-and-the-holy-spirit/feed/10Dr. Candida Moss of Notre Dame — and CNN’s ‘Finding Jesus’ — Talks About the Theology-Class Controversyhttps://www.catholicvote.org/dr-candida-moss-of-notre-dame-and-cnns-finding-jesus-talks-about-the-theology-class-controversy/
https://www.catholicvote.org/dr-candida-moss-of-notre-dame-and-cnns-finding-jesus-talks-about-the-theology-class-controversy/#respondSat, 28 Feb 2015 23:53:45 +0000http://www.catholicvote.org/?p=65306Earlier today, I posted a story over at my recently launched Pax Culturati blog at Patheos Catholic about the new CNN series “Finding Jesus,” which looks at the story of Christ through the lens of six artifacts. Click here for that.

The post features an interview with U.K.-born Dr. Candida Moss, a Notre Dame professor specializing in the New Testament and early Christianity and Judaism, who’s part of the university’s theology department. We talked about “Finding Jesus,” but we also talked about Moss’ background as a Yale-educated cradle Catholic (she did her undergrad and post-graduate work at Yale, and also graduated from Yale Divinity School).

You’re sometimes the subject of controversy for your views and writings. What’s your take on that?

I actually think it’s a really good week when I get hate mail from very conservative Catholics and very liberal atheists. I feel like I must be doing something right that day to annoy everyone. I think people, not everyone, thinks that history shouldn’t be done with a sense of humor, and not everyone thinks that we should ask too many questions. I’m a firm believer that seeking understanding and knowledge is something that’s good, and so I try to do what helps me sleep well at night.

Catholic William F. Buckley wrote “God and Man at Yale,” about the aggressive secularization at America’s universities. How did you manage to not lose God or the Faith along the way?

I actually think, in some ways, it’s easier to be Catholic in a context where you’re not surrounded by other Catholics. There are some wonderful churches at Yale, and there are other Catholics or other faith communities there. I really loved the Latin Mass at St. Mary’s Hillhouse, the sunrise Mass. The music is fantastic.

For me it wasn’t that challenging. I was TAing, and I was teaching Baptist ministers and Evangelicals. I think that their expectations for me were really low and so that I was constantly overachieving. They think this Papist woman isn’t that bad. It was fun.

We also discussed the current controversy over a proposal to alter the core curriculum requirements at Notre Dame. Currently all undergrads, regardless of their course of study, are required to take two theology courses. Some think that should be changed.

With so many Catholic institutions of higher learning happily shedding their roots in the Faith in favor of the liberal secularism that dominates higher ed, out of a misguided notion of relevance or just a desire to be considered among the cool kids, many fear that Notre Dame is well on its way to just becoming another secular school whose name and history have nothing to do with its day-to-day life.

(Not to mention, convincing Catholic parents, students and alumni to shell out money on what may be an increasingly empty promise that those dollars are going to promote a truly Catholic education.)

So, what is your understanding of the theology controversy?

Actually, my understanding of what’s happening with the theology requirement is that there is a conversation about potentially allowing one of the requirements to be taught by other departments. So, we won’t actually lower the requirement, we would just allow someone to take a sociology of religion course, some such thing.

The concern is, that’s all well and good, but shouldn’t there be some fundamental things that we want our students to learn? Do we want them to learn about Scripture and tradition and doctrine and ethics? I think that’s a really valid concern. At this juncture, it’s just a conversation. There’s a great deal of controversy about it, especially because people look to Notre Dame as a Catholic university and worry about its health.

How Catholic is Notre Dame?

We have chapels in every building. I know a lot of students that go to daily Mass. We’re definitely not Franciscan [University of Steubenville] or Ave Maria, and it’s a struggle. It’s one that Notre Dame really thinks about and worries about.

I teach in the theology department and have many colleagues who focus on trying to put Catholic ideals into practice and … try to protect Notre Dame’s Catholic identity.

I’m sure that it comes with a certain professional cost in that they’re not that invested in, they’re not able to do their research or they’re spending a lot of time on this. So, I feel really encouraged when I see my colleagues doing that. I think, at the university, we obviously, always, need to keep an eye on what percentage of our faculty is Catholic and what percentage of our student body is Catholic.

But it is a Catholic school, and it’s a place where the Catholic Church can do a lot of its thinking.

]]>https://www.catholicvote.org/dr-candida-moss-of-notre-dame-and-cnns-finding-jesus-talks-about-the-theology-class-controversy/feed/0Kathleen Eaton Bravo Changes Course for Pro-Life BirthChoicehttps://www.catholicvote.org/kathleen-eaton-bravo-changes-course-for-pro-life-birthchoice/
https://www.catholicvote.org/kathleen-eaton-bravo-changes-course-for-pro-life-birthchoice/#commentsWed, 12 Nov 2014 15:45:01 +0000http://www.catholicvote.org/?p=63336On Thursday, Nov. 6, pro-life activist Kathleen Eaton Bravo stood up in front of a ballroom packed with employees, supporters and guests — including Bishop Kevin Vann of the Diocese of Orange — at the Balboa Bay Resort in Newport Beach, California, and announced a radical change for the organization she founded in 1986.

As of February 1, BirthChoice Health Clinics will become Obria™ Medical Clinics, a rebranding that also represents a broadening of the focus for the current network of six medical clinics and one mobile clinic in Orange and Los Angeles Counties, which provides a variety of free medical services for women, particularly women (and men) facing crisis pregnancies.

Functioning in part as an alternative to Planned Parenthood, BirthChoice does not perform abortions or refer for abortions, but it does offer pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, STD testing, well-woman exams (including pelvic exams and Pap smears), referral for low-cost mammograms and prenatal care. It also counsels women on all the risks of birth control, emergency contraception and abortion, along with educating both mothers- and fathers-to-be on parenting and adoption.

In her address, Bravo talked about making the change from being pregnancy resource centers, giving out “Pampers and a prayer,” to full-service medical facilities.

“We took three pregnancy centers medical in 2006 and the beginning of 2007,” she said. “Instead of 500 women a year, we immediately went above 10,000, men and women. We went from a pregnancy test and an ultrasound — which, by the way, in our clinics, from 87 percent to 92 percent of the women and men who come in and see their baby in the womb and hear the heartbeat change their minds and choose life for the unborn child.”

She continued, “We’re doing well-women care. Why? Because Planned Parenthood did well-women care, too. We had to do women’s Paps, to get more and more of these young people in, because they have to have their exams, if they’re sexually active.

“We do cancer screening; we do prenatal care. We were really happy, and then all of a sudden, something started coming at us called the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare.”

With Planned Parenthood being listed as a primary-care provider in California, BirthChoice has already responded by partnering with the Lestonnac Free Clinic in Orange, and with the Hurtt Family Health Clinic in Santa Ana, to offer patients care beyond the sexual-health treatment and information they get at BirthChoice.

Speaking to the Orange County Catholic News, Bravo said, “This medical collaboration model, which joins like-minded clinics, is a revolutionary development in health care. Not only do these treasured partnerships save BirthChoice crucial funding, they also provide our underserved, low-income patients with access to comprehensive and specialized health resources, both for themselves and their families.”

But to truly take on Planned Parenthood, with its close relationship with pro-abortion politicians and hundreds of millions in government funding, Bravo has decided, with the assistance of her donors and board of directors, to take a page from the abortion provider’s playbook.

After years of consultation and the hiring of an outside branding company, BirthChoice is changing its name (and it’s no accident that the first two letters of that new name are ‘ob’).

“We got a name that we could trademark,” Bravo said, “and hold it, and nobody else can. We own the URL; we own the dot.com, the dot.org, the dot.net. We have it trademarked nationally, and our legal team on the board is now trademarking it internationally.

“It’s Obria Medical Clinics. Obra, the core word, in Spanish, means ‘works,’ and our brand will be the good work we’re doing.”

The organization is also expanding its reach.

“We’ve copied Planned Parenthood’s affiliate model,” said Bravo at the gala. “So what we’ve done is we’ve created the Obria Foundation, and umbrella corporation. I’ve actually moved over there with some of the staff. Jennifer Wallace and her staff have taken over the medical clinics. Our board will be a board for both organizations.”

The current clinics, as well as other clinics throughout California, will, as Bravo put it, “do business as an affiliate of Obria Medical Clinics, and their clinic will say, Obria Medical Clinics. We will import to them our intellectual property, years of hard work that has been developed by a board of directors, by consultants, by my staff, by many of you we’ve reached out to.

“That model is going to go throughout California first. Why California? The abortion rate in California is 40 percent above the national average. … Ladies and gentleman, we are ground zero. We are the killing fields.”

She said, “The need for us to brand this Obria Medical Clinic as soon as possible has become an urgency. Twenty-three groups have already called us from up and down the state to say, ‘We’re ready. Give us the paperwork to sign it. Let’s do this.’ This is unheard-of in the prolife movement. I’m being contacted from Denver and Seattle, Washington, D.C., New York and Florida, [saying]‘please come.’ Texas, Detroit.

“We haven’t even spread the word yet. Tonight’s the first night.”

While BirthChoice adheres to the Catholic pro-life ethic and has a great deal of Catholic support, not everyone at the organization is Catholic, and not all of them are women. Staffer Keith Cotton, talking to CatholicVote after addressing a breakfast for Orange County Catholic professionals, said he came to the movement from working in ministry at Evangelical Pastor Rick Warren’s Saddleback megachurch.

“The irony is,” said Cotton, “with my background in law enforcement and everything I’ve done, and being adopted, I’ve never known that I was going to end up in a pro-life mission. … We need to find a voice in every church, regardless of the denomination that will stand for pro-life. That’s where the difference begins.”

As a woman who has endured the trauma of having an abortion, Bravo has made it her mission to save mothers, and their children, from having to suffer what she did.

“When we started this,” she said “It was ‘save the child in the womb.’ As Christians, we believe in the sanctity of life, from conception to natural death. When I got into this, I wanted to make sure that every women I came in contact with, would not make the same mistake I did.

“But today, the need of these pro-life, life-affirming clinics — I can’t even put it into words. … Ladies and gentlemen, women don’t die from a crisis pregnancy. The baby will die if we can’t reach them. Our children are dying.”

]]>https://www.catholicvote.org/kathleen-eaton-bravo-changes-course-for-pro-life-birthchoice/feed/10‘Sleepy Hollow’ Catholic Star Orlando Jones on Good and Evilhttps://www.catholicvote.org/sleepy-hollow-catholic-star-orlando-jones-on-good-and-evil/
https://www.catholicvote.org/sleepy-hollow-catholic-star-orlando-jones-on-good-and-evil/#respondMon, 10 Nov 2014 20:01:43 +0000http://www.catholicvote.org/?p=63272If you haven’t been watching Fox’s supernatural drama “Sleepy Hollow,” currently airing its second season on Mondays at 9 pm. ET/PT, you’re missing one of the best-written, funniest, scariest, loopiest and most exciting thrill rides in primetime TV.

British actor Tom Mison plays Ichabod Crane, recast as a soldier/spy in the Revolutionary War, in the employ of Gen. George Washington (nearly every major figure of the period gets mentioned or seen in a flashback, from Benjamin Franklin to Daniel Boone).

On the field of battle, he killed a mysterious horseman (later revealed to be his old pal and romantic rival Abraham Van Brunt) and is himself slain, but a spell cast by his secret-witch wife Katrina (Katia Winter), causes both him and the now-Headless Horseman to be revived in 21st-century Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.

The Horseman is revealed to now be Death, one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse; Katrina was stuck in Purgatory (but now she’s out); and there are demons in the woods … but going any further in describing the complicated plot would take up too much space, so just click on the Wikipedia page and read it yourself.

Suffice to say the Apocalypse is at hand, the Devil is moving in the world, and Crane, platonically partnered with Sleepy Hollow cop Lt. Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie), is out to save his marriage, his son, Henry (who is now a Sin Eater, a servant of Moloch and the Horseman of War, played with great gusto by John Noble), and the world, usually in that order.

Although its plot is fantastical, and its interpretation of Revelation could charitably be described as loose, “Sleepy Hollow” has always been respectful of both the notion of faith and of people who have faith (I discussed this last spring here).

In particular, there’s the character of Frank Irving (a nod to Washington Irving, the founder of the “Sleepy Hollow” feast), played by Orlando Jones, the town’s former police chief. At first skeptical of Abbie’s wild stories, he became a believer during season one.

A Catholic with a failed marriage and a daughter in a wheelchair after a car accident, Frank was seen struggling with his faith, with the help of his longtime friend, Father Boland (David Fonteno).

At the end of last season, when a demon possessed Frank’s daughter, causing her to kill Boland and a police officer, he confessed to the killings, sacrificing himself to protect her.

This season, Frank’s been seen in prison and in a psychiatric hospital. Henry, posing as a lawyer, tricked him into signing a contract with Moloch in his own blood, thereby selling his soul. He’s beset with temptations, including the one to kill the unrepentant man who struck and injured his daughter.

Jones , himself a Catholic, took time out from production in Wilmington, N.C., to answer a few questions about Frank Irving, the state of his soul, and why he’s not getting much help from his pals right now …

Catholic Vote: When you heard that Irving was going to be jailed for crimes he did not commit, what when through your mind, from a character standpoint?

Jones: Irving is the disciple who has lost faith. After his daughter’s accident, he wrestled with his belief in God, and how a higher power could allow Macey to become paralyzed. His decision to confess to the murders of his priest and a fellow officer was driven by his commitment to protect his family at any cost. Mostly, I was thinking about how long it would take before Abbie and Ichabod bailed him out. I mean … they’ve got to #FreeFrankIrving at some point.

CV: Irving is facing huge temptations in prison, including despair and the desire for revenge on the man who hurt his daughter. The writers will decide how it all comes out, but what about that dilemma appealed to you as an actor and a thoughtful person?

Jones: As I mentioned before, I’m especially moved by the complexity of the choices he needs to make about what it means to be good or evil, and how the choices we all make impact us implicitly and explicitly. Selling his soul may not have been a decision that Irving made knowingly, but I think he understands that it’s not a choice he can run away from.

The only path forward is one with great moral hazards, but he was (regardless of his noble intentions) a co-creator in his current circumstances. Good and evil; right and wrong — those can too easily become abstractions that don’t really allow for the full range of conflicting emotions.

Irving may end up making the wrong choices for the right reasons. That’s an interesting place to come from as an actor and a human being.

CV: If you, Orlando, were to sit down with Irving and offer him advice on how to survive his ordeal, what would you say?

Jones: I’d tell him to get a new lawyer. I’d tell him not to sign documents with his own blood. And I’d tell him to put his “friends” on blast, because nobody is coming to visit this dude. I mean … come on Mrs. BAMF? Where are you?

(BAMF is sort for “bad a**”, etc., and “Mrs. BAMF” is Jones’ nickname for the character of Jenny Mills, played by Lyndie Greenwood, Abbie’s gun-toting, loose-cannon sister. Although Irving’s dedicated to his family, Jones, an avid user of Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram, likes to joke about the “chemistry” between Frank and Jenny. For the record, Jenny’s only got eyes for Nick Hawley, played by Matt Barr, an expert in ancient artifacts who’s helping out the demon-fighting team in season two.)

CV: What advice would you give to Crane about dealing with this wife and son (which are problems of a whole other order)?

Jones: Crane’s gonna need to figure that one out on his own. He’s not too good at taking advice. That family is more dysfunctional than the Kardashians.

CV: In your own life, what value have you gotten from trials you’ve endured, and what got you through them?

Jones: Life is a series of peaks and valleys, and that’s sort of par for the course. I’ve done the best I can not to take myself or anything else too seriously. I’m accountable to those in my trust circle, and I expect the same in return. Ultimately, the greatest value I can take from any trial is to endeavor to “fail better.”

James R. Celoni is a music director for his parish and, for a living, he’s a “technical evangelist”for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, helping parishes, schools and other church organizations find the best ways to use technology to achieve the mission of spreading the Word of God.

Of course, at daily Mass everywhere around the world, Catholics are fed Scripture, with readings from the Old and New Testaments and the Acts of the Apostles. Unfortunately, many Catholics don’t go to daily Mass or even take a peek at the cycle of daily readings.

Celoni decided to do something about that. The answer came out of the closet — literally.

Over lunch at the Archdiocese headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, Celoni says, “I thought this was a good idea to do on a daily basis, and of course, I have the best of intentions, but it’s hard to make time to do things like that. I”m a firm believer that there are things that you can do that take time, but make more time for you than they take.

“One of those is praying; one of those is working out; and one of those is taking a nap. That doesn’t mean any of those actually happen — not necessarily.

“So, I thought, ‘How am I going to do this on a regular basis? I already wear purple during Advent … if I dress to the readings, then I have to know the readings and spend time with the readings. I dress every day, so I dress to the readings.’

“So, someone at work said, ‘You should start a blog about this.’ I thought, ‘What a waste. How silly.’ Then I realized, it doesn’t take a lot of time or effort to do a blog. That’s how I started.”

Considering his love for music, Celoni says, “Then I thought, ‘Well, if I have the readings, I can summarize the readings and have a little connection with the clothing. Since I do music, if I find music that fits with the readings, I’ll put that in. Then I’m saying something about the saints, so it grew that way.”‘

In each post, Celoni provides the daily Mass readings, a summary (sometimes from Pope Francis), a reflection and a “word cloud” presented in an appropriate shape. This was the one for Oct. 31.

Celoni works in an office, so he’s not showing up in an outrageous costume each day. Instead, he combines colors, ties, suspenders and pins to reflect the theme of each day’s Scripture excerpts.

(The Church places great emphasis on color at the Liturgy, reflecting different seasons and holy days throughout the year. Here’s a guide to all that.)

You can click here to see the angel pin, white shirt, abacus tiepin, tie with faces, eyeball tiepin and “peace sign” tie bar that Celoni chose to wear on Nov. 1, All Saints Day, or just look below …

“My wife finds ties at thrift shops,” Celoni says. “She knows what I do, so she finds tie pins. I have over 100 ties.”

The way we dress not only reflects how we’re feeling about ourselves but also our attitude about the places we choose to go in the clothes.

People might not think it’s acceptable to show up at a fancy dinner party or an elegant classical concert in a tee shirt and shorts, if you’re a man, or if you’re a woman, in a skimpy halter dress.

But, especially in Southern California, these are often considered perfectly fine outfits to wear to consume the Eucharist and hear the Word of God. And they’re not always reserved just for the congregation.

“I don’t consider myself a liberal or a conservative when it comes to the Church,” Celoni says, “but when I go to a Mass, and the reader is wearing cutoffs or shorts, I don’t like that. So I write that.

“One of the things I put on my About page, there’s a lot of imagery in Scripture about dressing, like ‘put on the armor of God’ and ‘put on the shield of Faith.’

“So I have a picture of what I’m wearing, but the real challenge is to dress to the Word of God. I’m hoping that’s what it says — ‘Dress to God’s Word: Liturgical Dress.’ I’m hoping that this will be an encourager of that.”

]]>https://www.catholicvote.org/liturgical-dress-wearing-gods-word-every-day/feed/3What the Synod Relatio Didn’t Say (And How It Didn’t Say It)https://www.catholicvote.org/what-the-synod-relatio-didnt-say-and-how-it-didnt-say-it/
https://www.catholicvote.org/what-the-synod-relatio-didnt-say-and-how-it-didnt-say-it/#commentsThu, 16 Oct 2014 04:57:46 +0000http://www.catholicvote.org/?p=62583Once again, the Vatican has tripped over the English language and landed in a heap of trouble.

Late in 2013, I posted a pair of articles at Breitbart.com dealing with issues surrounding the Vatican’s official English-language translation of Pope Francis’ first encyclical, Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”).

Click here and here for them, but in short, the translations weren’t faithful in places to the Spanish original, leaving out words and phrases, adding in other words and phrases, which lent shades of meaning to the text not reflected in the original (or necessarily in the translations into other languages).

My partner in this enterprise was multilingual Florida businessman and entrepreneur Joe Garcia, who’s also a faithful Catholic familiar with Church teachings and terminology He previously translated an encyclical by now-Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI from the Latin (and a recent Pope Francis interview, given in Spanish to an Argentine newspaper, which didn’t do any better putting it in English than the Vatican).

We even made a joint appearance on Michael Voris’ online talk show to discuss the translation issues, in a segment called “The Vatican’s English Translator Should Be Fired!”

Naturally, the news media hops on anything having to do with homosexuality and traditional marriage, and that’s where some of the problems lie when the document was translated from the original Italian. True, it’s an “unofficial” translation of a “work in progress,” but that didn’t stop it setting off the usual firestorm of controversy, requiring some considerable backpedaling.

In the English translation provided by the Vatican, this is rendered as: “Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?”

The key word “valutando,” which has sparked controversy within the Church, was translated by the Vatican as “valuing.”

Italian’s “valutando” in fact means “evaluating,” and in this context would be better translated with “weighing” or “considering.”

The English translation, in contrast, suggests a valuing of the homosexual orientation, which could at least create confusion to those who are faithful to the teaching of the Church.

“The English version of the Synod document is quite frankly a disgrace. Whoever is responsible for it should be ashamed,” with the sub-heading “English is the world’s most important language, or are there some people in the Vatican who have not woken up to this?”

He writes, “Nor is this the first time that the Vatican has produced such substandard work. There are some quite bright lads up at the North American College in Rome who can hold a pen, and, I am sure, could do a lot better, stylistically, than this. Why didn’t someone go up that hill and ask them to lend a hand?”

The priest’s issues don’t end with style, as he writes, “There is truth in this document, but reading the document resembles searching for bits of coal in a huge slagheap.”

After reading articles such as these, and seeing the confusion and panic in my Facebook feed, I returned to Garcia with some email questions about how the Vatican keeps getting what is essentially the lingua franca of the Western world’s media so wrong (questions in bold; answers in italics).

Previously, you’ve pointed out errors in English translations from Spanish originals. Could you start by giving us a sense of your proficiency in Italian, the official language of the Synod?

In my professional work, most of my work is in the Spanish-English spectrum, but the second greatest number of documents, etc., I have are in the Italian-English spectrum. I’ve previously taken a pass at Vatican documents from an Italian original.

In your opinion, what are the most egregious mistranslations, or even mischaracterizations, in the Vatican’s “unofficial” English translation of the Synod’s midterm report?

There are several “flavors.” One is that of transliteration. For example, in the original, you may see the phrase “condiscendenza divina,” which somehow becomes “divine condescension,” when it really means “divine self-emptying.” Or “valutando” as “valuing” instead of “evaluating.” Then there is the “softening.” In the original, we see a lot of “debere” (meaning “ought” or “it is to be”) rendered as “should.”

Finally, there are instances of where words or phrases are changed in the translation without any explanation … not even a bad one. “Cogliere” (literally, “to grasp”) becomes accepting instead of the more equivalent “being cognizant of.”

As a business professional involved in translations where accuracy means a great deal, if you were to advise the Vatican on how to avoid these problems in the future, what would you say?

First, not to underestimate the importance of translations. I think many Vatican functionaries may subconsciously not give these sufficient weight, since “their” translations don’t have a transactional component. That is, it’s not a matter of a contract between two parties where one stands to be very adversely damaged by — and whose professional future is at risk for — and incorrect translation.

Are you detecting an ideological bent to these English documents?

It seems to me these mistranslations seem to skew more toward a modernist direction. As to why that may be the case, I can only surmise.

Since we don’t know exactly whom in the Vatican is responsible for these translations, how should lay people, especially press members, approach the English-language documents?

With a charitable desire to verify the veracity of a translation.

Would it be useful for the Vatican to make available the name or names of the person or persons responsible for the translations?

]]>https://www.catholicvote.org/what-the-synod-relatio-didnt-say-and-how-it-didnt-say-it/feed/7Dr. Tim Gray on Middle East Christians: ‘They have an amazing witness’https://www.catholicvote.org/dr-tim-gray-on-middle-east-christians-they-have-an-amazing-witness/
https://www.catholicvote.org/dr-tim-gray-on-middle-east-christians-they-have-an-amazing-witness/#respondMon, 13 Oct 2014 22:10:04 +0000http://www.catholicvote.org/?p=62459On Sept. 25, he was the keynote speaker at the 2014 edition of the Orange Count Catholic Prayer Breakfast, held at the new Christ Cathedral campus in Garden Grove, California (where the Augustine Institute has a new location).

Here’s the entire address, which focuses on another one of his passions, getting Catholics to be more knowledgeable and excited about Scripture (more info at this link)…

After the breakfast and a book signing (he has several), we sat down for a chat at the Cultural Center on the campus. Part one of our conversation was posted yesterday; here are more of Dr. Gray’s thoughts.

On the witness of Middle East Christians who flee or die rather than renounce their faith:

“They have an amazing witness, amazing courage. Somehow, we’ve got to get these stories of these wonderful people told and shown. I know a community in Amman, Jordan, beautiful Catholic church there, and the Muslims buy the land right next door, they put a mosque to blast through the loudspeakers the call to prayer — and yet they go on. They keep going on. It’s important that they be known.”

On the Vatican standing up for Christians in the region (click here for a 1999 New York Times piece on the story Dr. Gray references below):

“In Nazareth, the Muslims bought a large piece of land right next to the Basilica of the Annunciation. They wanted to build the world’s biggest mosque, to crowd out and block out the Basilica of the Annunciation. It was only the Vatican that stopped that, that appealed to Israel over and over again. The Holy Father had to get involved to stop that.

“So, really, it’s the Vatican and the Holy Father that is the voice for Christians in the East. We have to let that voice be heard.”

On why the lack of assistance for Middle East Christians is not just a tragedy for the Christians:

“It’s a sad thing. The problem is, I’ll give you an example why this is so important — Christians there bring about education, so in the Catholic schools in Palestine, for example, in Israel, most of the students are Muslim.

“The Catholics bring a witness of values and education, and of the good and the true and the beautiful there, that is an important witness there. … What hope is there in Gaza for there ever to be moderates if we don’t allow people to be educated?”

On what Catholics can do to regain confidence in the value of their own Faith and culture:

“I think we have a false sense of charity, in that, if ‘m going to be nice to somebody, I’m not going to say they’re wrong, or I’m right, or that the Church is right. We have to realize that charity means we have to share the Truth. We can’t keep it to ourselves.

“Just as we know that charity is not to keep bread for ourselves but to feed the hungry, we also have to teach and share the truth of our Faith and not be afraid to do that. If we realize that it’s a duty of charity, maybe we’ll do it, feel free to impose and propose.”

On what Christians are up against:

“ISIS has claimed they want to kill the pope. What they mean by that is not just that they want to assassinate Pope Francis, but the fact that they want to kill the pope, they want to blow out the flame of Christianity in the world.

“I hope people will wake up and realize that today it’s the Middle East; tomorrow it’s Europe; following it’s in America.”

On preaching about Scripture in Christ Cathedral:

“Yes, it’s fun to have Catholics expounding Scripture. That’s the passion, to get that to turn around. This is the moment when Catholics are going to have to start learning, in the information age, if we don’t know our Faith, we’ll lose it.”

]]>https://www.catholicvote.org/dr-tim-gray-on-middle-east-christians-they-have-an-amazing-witness/feed/0Dr. Tim Gray on Tough Questions About Persecuted Middle East Christianshttps://www.catholicvote.org/dr-tim-gray-on-tough-questions-about-persecuted-middle-east-christians/
https://www.catholicvote.org/dr-tim-gray-on-tough-questions-about-persecuted-middle-east-christians/#commentsSun, 12 Oct 2014 19:24:48 +0000http://www.catholicvote.org/?p=62453Afterword, I got to sit down with Dr. Gray in the Cultural Center on the Christ Cathedral campus in Garden Grove, California, for an in-depth chat focusing mostly on the ongoing and horrific persecution of Christians across the Middle East. He regularly leads pilgrimages to the Holy Land (the next one, sponsored by the Napa Institute, is in April of 2015) and is very familiar with the precarious and often dangerous situation of Christians in the region, from Iraq to Syria to Israel and Gaza.

Complex and thorny issues affect their lives, and sometimes it’s near-impossible to figure out what to do that won’t wind up harming besieged and vulnerable Christian populations, who don’t seem to be on the top of anyone’s agenda — except that of the Vatican.

Here’s part one of excerpts from our conversation:

On the situation in Syria:

“It’s really tragic. I remember now, at the very beginning of the Syrian civil war conflict, I was in Jordan — I do pilgrimages every year, so I was leading a pilgrimage-talking to a lot of the churches there. There are a lot of Iraqi Christians (there) who, during the Iraq War, fled. After Saddam was overthrown, it became more and more dangerous; they became more and more exposed and vulnerable.

“The original Al Qaeda in Iraq, which then evolved into ISIS, even at that time, and in that conflict, they were targeting the Christians and making things hard. Talking with Jordanian Christians and some of these Iraqi Christians about the conflict in Syria, they were telling me, ‘The Americans don’t understand. If Assad’s overthrown, it’s going to lead to chaos.’ They said, ‘Twelve percent of Syria was Christian. All these Christians are going to be run out. It’s going to be a holocaust.’

“That opened my eyes to, we misunderstand the conflict in Syria a great deal, and the implications it’s going to have for Christians there. You can already see that this radical group of Muslims, Al Qaeda, which is now ISIS, they want to purge all that land of Christians.”

On why that is:

“They don’t understand Christianity to begin with, but they see Christianity as a Western religion, so they want to destroy the West. So even though these are Easterners who’ve lived in the East, and that Christianity came out of the East and Jerusalem, they disregard that, and they see it as something they want to destroy.

“People don’t realize — a small radical group can leverage against larger numbers in ways that are hard for us to believe, but it’s pretty powerful, using intimidation and fear and radical violence.”

On why we haven’t heard more vigorous outcry — except perhaps from Pastor Rick Warren of Christ Cathedral’s Orange County neighbor, Saddleback Church — about the persecution of Middle East Christians from American Protestant and Evangelical leaders, whose adherents outnumber Catholics in the U.S.:

“They have a blind eye to the fact that there are Christians in the East and Middle East. So, one of the things you see is, Evangelicals make many pilgrimages to the Holy Land, but they go with all the Israeli tour companies. And the Israeli tour companies don’t like to take people to Bethlehem or to Nazareth or to Jericho.

“This is the amazing thing, but most of the Evangelicals who go to the Holy Land for tours don’t go to those places, and they don’t know there’s Christian Palestinians. They don’t know it. I’m very serious. They don’t know this.

“Hopefully, most of the Catholic tours that go use Christian tour guides, and they work with the Christian Palestinian tour companies, to support the local Christians. But the Evangelicals don’t know. It’s symptomatic of the fact that they use the Israeli tour companies, and the Israeli tour companies try not to get them to see the Christian local community.

“That’s one of the beautiful things that the Catholic Church tries to emphasize. Whenever I head a pilgrimage, I always stop at a local Christian church. So we’ll go to Good Shepherd in Jericho, places like that.

“Some Evangelicals do go to some of the holy sites where there are Catholic churches, but even with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (in Jerusalem, identified as both the place of the Crucifixion and Jesus’ temporary tomb), they’ll go to the Garden Tomb, which claims to be the tomb of Christ, which is not true.

“But British Gen. Gordon claimed to have found the tomb out there and said, ‘This is the Garden Tomb,’ but there’s no historical basis.”

Next: Dr. Gray addresses the witness of Middle Eastern Christians, what the Church does and can do about it, and why Catholics should know their Faith.